Viking: Battle for Asgard Preview

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More than just a battlefield full of Norse warriors.

By Dave McCarthy

Viking: Battle for Asgard is the latest battlefield epic from the epic battlefield specialists at Creative Assembly. It's an action adventure game that's bursting at the seams with Norse mythology and brutal action, full of heroic quests and climactic showdowns on an enormous scale. The premise behind the game is that the goddess Hel has been banished from Asgard (the home of the gods) for defying the will of Odin (the chief of the gods). Slightly miffed, she decides to take up residence in Midgard to raise hell by creating an undead army with which to take over the human realm, hoping to hasten the approach of Ragnarok. And that's where the player comes in: as Skarin, a young viking warrior, chosen by the inhabitants of Asgard to wrest back control of Midgard.

The soundtrack will feature an original score, recorded by a full orchestra and choir.

In order to do so, Skarin is plunged into a succession of battles in the hope of recovering Midgard territory by territory. Like Creative Assembly's Total War and Total Warrior series, one of the game's chief attractions is the scale and intensity of those battles, most notably in the sheer number of combatants as thousands of viking warriors do battle with thousands more undead warriors.

"We wanted to stay faithful to some of the Norse mythology," explains Creative Assembly's Mark Sutherns. "But at the same time we didn't want to be constrained by history, so we've got those fantasy elements, those magical elements, and we want the combat to be brutal." Indeed it is, with each one of those warriors powered by AI - so in contrast to the Total War titles, there's no direct control of combat. Instead, Skarin will shape the course of battle by darting around the battlefield whenever flashpoints arise, clearing bottlenecks and so on, or by calling in aerial dragon strikes granted to him by his patron goddess, Freya, in return for suitably heroic achievements (such as eliminating an enemy champion, for example).

The most recent demonstration of the game revealed a three-part battle towards the end of the game. The first part sees rock-throwing enemies, masses of troops, and pillars of light piercing the gloom, highlighting the positions of enemy shamans, who are busy respawning enemy units (while your recruit counter ticks slowly down). So your first job is to eliminate those shamans (after first destroying their shields), which triggers a cut-scene to transition to the next part of the battle, in which the chief objective is to eliminate two giants and break through the enemy gates. Then it's on to the final part, in which you fight for control of (in this case) Forvik.

Skarin can buy runes from the blacksmith to give his weapons added oomph.

But there's more to Battle for Asgard than just battles. Sure, they're the big set-piece showcases, so it's no wonder that Creative Assembly's been showing them off. They are, however, just one part of the story. In fact, they probably occupy the same space that an end-of-level boss would in any other game.

"While we're showing you the battles because they're a spectacle, we don't want you to go away thinking they're the soul of the game, because they're not," says Sutherns. "The battles are there as bookends. There are chapters in the game and those chapters are marked by the battles that will see you recapture the settlements that once belonged to the Vikings and now belong to the undead Legion."